Most California universities’ schools of education received low grades in a recent report about teacher training from the National Council on Teacher Quality, but the University of Redlands School of Education is one of four listed as doing well at preparing teachers.

Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the advocacy group in June released the first edition of its NCTQ Teacher Prep Review, an evaluation of more than 1,100 colleges and universities that prepare teachers to work with elementary- and secondary-school students.

“The high marks for Redlands in the NCTQ report are a testament to the leading-edge work of our faculty and staff and the quality of the education our students are receiving,” said James Valdez, dean of the School of Education, in a news release. “Graduates from our teaching training programs are in high demand for jobs in the region’s school districts.”

This is not news to Virginia “Ginny” Hart, 85, of Redlands. She and her late husband, Harley C. Hart, sent daughters Connie and Wendy to the University of Redlands. Both earned teaching credentials and had long-term teaching careers, as did their husbands, James Pearce and David Gillotti, who also graduated from U of R teaching programs.

Hart’s granddaughter Kailey Gillotti graduated this year from U of R and is working as a special education paraprofessional while considering going for a teaching credential or a master’s degree, and her grandson Michael Gillotti is set to graduate next year.

“We are pretty attached to the University of Redlands,” she said. “It can be very expensive anymore, but every place else is too. And the diploma carries a lot of prestige “” employers always recognize the name and what it stands for.”

Other California universities that received three or more stars on the NCTQ’s four-star scale are UC Berkeley, UC Irvine and UC San Diego, which won praise for their teaching methods in basic reading and for student-teaching opportunities. The U of R received 3.5 stars for its preparation of high school teachers.

The report contends that the United States, once the world leader in educational attainment, has slipped into the middle of the pack. The product of eight years of development and 10 pilot studies, results are derived from research, the practices of high-performing nations and states, consensus views of experts, the demands of the Common Core State Standards and other standards for college and career readiness.

The NCTQ report has been criticized by educational institutions including the University of California system, which argues that the study’s rating system was designed to evaluate undergraduate, four-year teacher education programs. The criteria used by the NCTQ are not an accurate measure of post-baccalaureate and master’s degree teacher preparation programs like those operated by the UC system, according to a news release from UC Provost Aim?e Dorr, making it impossible for such programs to achieve the report’s highest ratings.